A century ago, the british empire still circled the world and was flush with cash.
Now it’s circling the bowl, about to get flushed.
Maximilien Robespierre is a youtube channel covering events on the Irish Isle and British Isle. In this interview with author Kevin Meagher seen below, they discuss “Is A United Ireland Inevitable?” Very likely yes, as the british economy lurches from one disaster to another while Northern Ireland stays buoyant thanks to the “Northern Ireland Protocol”.
For those who don’t know what it is, the NIP is a special exclusion for occupied Ireland. The rest of the United Kingdom has completely left the European single market after brexit, but occupied Ireland has its feet in both camps. It is both allowed to trade freely with free Ireland (and thus access the European market) while simultaneously being part of the UK. It is the only part of the UK not to experience a massive economic downturn.
However, there are restrictions: Only goods produced in occupied Ireland can be exported to Europe as part of the European Union. Anything coming from Britain cannot, and is subject to customs checks and tariffs if it crosses into free Ireland. Anyone who has been watching A Different Bias will know that the UK economy is tanking and UK exports to Europe that once took an hour are now taking two days to cross the English Channel. And January and February are the slowest months of the year, so just wait until the busy season comes.
Boris Johnson the lavaTories keep blaming the pandemic, but even the UK’s rightwing media are starting to tell the truth. Johnson’s delusions of “global britain” have turned out to be local and isolated britain.
There is renewed talk of a second Scottish independence referendum, and both Wales and occupied Ireland are talking about leaving the UK. Wales might become its own country, and a Sinn Fein led government would reunite Ireland. Last week, the pro-UK rightwing parties ruling Belfast rendered themselves impotent after their leader resigned as First Minister, effectively suspending the government until new elections later this year.
Have you ever heard the allegory about a fifteen year old who thinks he knows everything and doesn’t want to obey rules at home, so he leaves? And how it doesn’t take long for him to realize what a mistake he’s made? The UK is that teenager.
Johnson and the lavaTories came to power with the ludicrous notion that the EU was “holding us back!” and that leaving the EU would bring “economic freedumb”. Leaving didn’t bring independence, it brought exclusion. Johnson is desperately trying to sign trade deals that are essentially worthless, and nobody wants to trade with the UK, they want to trade with Europe. Johnson expected the US to side with it, but decades of pro-Irish sentiment (and having an Irish-origin president) has put the US completely on Ireland’s side. The UK has no allies anywhere.
The UK still has money in its pockets, but it’s quickly running out. How soon before it runs back home to mommy and daddy in Brussels? Or maybe they won’t, since being part of the EU means being a democracy with human rights. If you think the US republiclown’s voter suppression moves are bad, you should see what Johnson is proposing, e.g. criminalizing public protest.
I’ve said several times elsewhere that England could end up being the North Korea of Europe, and I don’t see anything to dissuade me of that. The Channel Tunnel and rail travel through it will either become the thing that saves England from economic collapse, or England uses it to hold Scotland and Wales hostage. Or both.
You know, I used to buy into the idea that liberals and conservatives were a kind of yin and yang, and you needed both to keep the political teeter-totter (you may possibly call it a see-saw) more or less level. But lately I am coming to think that conservatism is a symptom of congenital brain damage. Their thought patterns are so inflexible that it seems like they are WWI soldiers running around in trenches. They can go from the left end of the trench to the right end, and they can go back to the left end again, but that is it. Any place outside of their trench could just as easily be on Pluto as on Earth, because they can never ever go there.
I once had a deeply conservative neighbor. One day, when the issue of publically funded abortions had briefly caught the attention of the news media, like a shiny bit of glass to a jackdaw, my neighbor said, “I don’t want abortion to be funded by the government, because I shouldn’t have to pay for other people fucking.” I knew I could never get him to agree that women’s bodily autonomy was worthwhile, and probably not even that the health of the pregnant person was worthy of his tax dollars, so I said, “You know, an unwanted and unloved child is quite likely to become an antisocial criminal, and the cost of locking that criminal up for most of their life would be WAY more expensive than the cost of an abortion.” THAT shut him up, and I thought that I had shifted the course of that oil tanker a little bit, but a few months later, what do I hear vomited from the very same mouth? You got it: “I don’t want abortion to be funded by the government, because I shouldn’t have to pay for other people fucking!”
Oy vey!